The Public Relations Committee met last night, and discussed getting the content together for publishing the school's first newsletter in quite awhile. We will be posting the content here first, until we have enough for a full newsletter. We are inviting all Assembly Members to submit articles, stories, drawings and photos for the blog and newsletter. We do not have a deadline at the moment - as one looks like it is drawing near, we will inform you.

If you have some online shopping coming up, please remember that any time you buy something at Amazon to enter the site through our Associates portal. Your browser will open to a copy of "The Sudbury Valley School Experience". Instead of continuing to buy the book, click on the “No, thank you. Please take me back to Amazon.com” link. Anything you buy from Amazon by going through Clearwater’s web site links will earn a percentage for Clearwater.

I've posted a permanent link to the portal on the sidebar on the right, over there.

Monday, October 20, 2008

I was feeling photographic on Sunday when we had our most recent Assembly Meeting. The unfortunate thing is that my camera is in the shop getting cleaned. Tom to the rescue. I borrowed his camera and was off and clicking. Here are some of the shots:

As its members become comfortable using this blog, School Meeting will need its own camera and a scanner. Right now all of the photos here are being shot by my personal super-crummy camera.

The quality of the blog will improve when the school gets a good camera that can shoot stills and video. And, think of the creative opportunities for our tender young buds! Ditto for a scanner. Things happen when my camera and I are not around to catch the action - games, big, little, weird and wonderful projects, classes (yes, classes) and all sorts of other interesting things. More importantly, they are things that School Meeting members find interesting and important. And video as an added feature is almost a requirement these days, is it not?

If I am not spending my time taking photos and posting them, I can start doing some photo editing demos. I can scan artwork with the scanner I will bring in and connect to my laptop until the school gets its own scanner.

Chloe, a former student who will be spending time at Clearwater as an intern this fall, will contribute to the blog, posting her photos and observations. This will bring another point of view to this project. There is no limit to the things School Meeting members and I can do to make this a great source of Clearwater information. We need a camera, then we need a scanner. Can you help?

Michelle, a student, lobbied School Meeting (Clearwater's decision-making body of students and staff) for permission to build and administer an art/graffiti wall at school. She got feedback in advance and during the meeting from several School Meeting members about the best location, rules for the wall and using low toxic paint. A few weeks ago School Meeting approved her request and she worked with a staff member to install plywood panels for the wall. The wall structure was completed this week. Several other students have joined Michelle to administer use of the wall. A lot of students have taken up the paint can to add their creative vision to the constantly changing surface.Michelle has painted some images using stencils she's created, which combine with free form designs for some really wonderful and unusual art.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Today was the first pizza day of the school year. Robert, James and Mat formed a concession committee to sell pizza and drinks one day each week. That's just the beginning. Because of school community enthusiasm, the committee plans to open a store to sell other items on a daily basis. It is likely that pizza will be available more than one day a week and the committee is considering creating a pizza punch card for payment convenience.Monies earned from concessions will be divided equally between Clearwater's general fund and to purchase educational supplies and equipment chosen by the concession committee.Photos of today's pizza day will be posted soon.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Grab a friend, grab a phone, get online, write a check...there are a whole list of ways you can help the school weather the fall financial storms. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Good for people who can do some fundraising at work:

Goat Insurance Fundraising

Hold a "goat insurance" fundraising event that people can't resist because they can't stop laughing. Flyers are mailed to your membership and/or other groups to announce that your organization will raffle off a donated goat. For $10, a person can send in the names of three people. Letters are then sent to those three people, telling them they have a chance to win a goat. But, for $10 they can buy "goat insurance" to protect themselves from being entered in the raffle. The winner of the raffle does get the goat, but after the fun wears off, the goat is returned to its owner.

This event was so wildly popular that passersby got on their cell phones to tell people about it. Puppies rented quick, and people started asking to make reservations. A good system will be needed to keep track of who rents a puppy, reservation time, return time, which puppy, and we also took driver's license as a guarantee that they return the puppy. We made $305 in 4 1/2 hours with 7 puppies. The event was from 10am-2:30pm, and we had to start turning people away around 1pm because all the time slots were reserved. Should have done this event two days in a row.

Welcome to The Clearwater School

Welcome to the Clearwater blog--where you will find original fiction, essay, personal opinion, art, photography and news of Clearwater. This is a forum for indiviual members of the Clearwater community to post their work--work that does not necesarily reflect the official views, aesthetics or opinions of the school as a whole. Enjoy hearing our voices.